When the bough breaks
by TukeIsHappilyNotWorking
Summary: A number of years after Frozen, Elsa must leave the castle to fight of a new form of mystical danger.


Magical attacks are things that should only happen once in a lifetime. They should be the big event—singular event—that were overcome and then were written as the highlight of that person's biography. Cinderella—she was the princess who had a night blessed by a fairy godmother and won over a prince through it. Aladdin—fought of his one evil villain with a genie. Belle—she was the one who broke her mate's curse with love. Elsa's life had already experienced it's evil villain and love-broken curse. So what was this—did the fates not get that memo? Or were they splitting hairs saying that _Anna_ had been the one to break that curse twelve years ago and she was still eligible? Because whatever was happening this evening was not natural. It was supernatural, and based on the reports of destruction, definitely villainous.

It had started with reports of black shadows ransacking outposts, but before the commotion of those reports had died down, more reports had come in showing a series of attacks heading towards the villages to the north of the capital. All attacks done with dark, nebulous creatures that couldn't be slain by bow or sword. It was a move of last resort, but it had been time to bring the queen into play. (A figure of speech never more appropriate than when your queen really was the most powerful player on the board.)

And so Elsa found herself freezing shadowed creatures on the south side of a lake in the last hour of the day.

They were fast—not entirely solid—but they fell like rocks when—Elsa gave a small smirk and aimed carefully—she sent a super freezing blast at them. This twelfth creature gave an aborted snarl as it seized up and fell to the shore. Two of it's… hooves?… broke off as it landed and a team of soldiers moved in to shatter the rest. So far they weren't reviving if they were broken up quickly enough.

"Have all the frozen creatures in the town been dispatched?" Elsa asked the captain.

"Yes, your Majesty. I have assigned men to watch the dust, just in case, but I think the town is now secure." he replied, wiping off dust and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. A streak of dirt remained.

Good news then—there seemed to be only two left—standing just forty meters away on the top ledge of the lake's damn. She turned to face them and felt a flash of dread as these last two just stood there, staring back. What were they waiting for? Elsa froze a quick path and moved towards them. Did they just smirk?

The two creatures suddenly reared up and slammed down on the damn below. An ominous crack ricocheted off the mountainside.

'Hellfires!' Elsa swore, 'there are more than a dozen villages downstream!'

She raced down the ice to reach them as they reared up again and in unison and smashed down upon the wall. A booming crack followed splinted pieces of wood. The surface Elsa skated across rocked and dropped down while tongues of water broke through the metal and timber. Elsa slammed her hands down and poured her power into the lake. A wave of freezing swept through the lake—back towards the town, left and right to the shores, forward to clutch at the arms of water stretching hungrily forward. She forced a second wave of cold through the lake, all the way down to the bottom, frozen still and solid till the cracking noises turned to low booms and then everything went silent. She would feel that tomorrow.

Elsa straightened up, scouring for the two last beasts. Her eyes searched through the chaos of frozen blasts of water that existed where the damn had stood. Where did they go? She couched defensively while expanding her search to the right and left. They were nowhere in sight. A group of soldiers was making their way across the ice. The fire that had been set in Steinsås was now just smoke. They weren't anywhere.

A distant blast and spot of red light came up from the valley. From Arendelle. They had drawn her away from the castle! Her whole world went cold. Her daughter was there!

Elsa ran.

There were times that she'd run farther in an hour than other people could travel in days, like that time she ran away twelve years ago. She'd never been able to consciously repeat it, but in times of crisis she sometimes speed time or shortened distance or just _somehow_ covered more ground than humanly possible.

The trees became but a blur. Too slow!

A second and a third blast came from by the coast. The king, Anna, and Kristoff were off at Corona, but she had stayed behind with young Ingegerd. Who she left! Elsa pushed faster, faster… Skidding on a patch of mud, she slammed into a tree. Her sleeve ripped unnoticed at the shoulder as she ran… another series of blasts. She was never going to make it in time. Oh—Ingegred—she was just three! She _had _to make it in time!

Elsa broke into the clearing leading down to the castle. Smoke poured out the eastern tower of the castle—where the nursery was. An anguished cry ripped from her throat and she caught flashes of red and blue through the remaining windows before her view was blocked by the town's buildings. The ground shook and then the battle went suddenly silent.

"Your Majesty!" A sergeant in the hall said in surprise, "there was an attack! There were creatures but just now…" he waved his sword at piles of black dirt that were beginning to blow away. The other guardsmen were shouting orders to check on the other corridors, secure the gates, getting soldiers down to the infirmary.

Elsa nodded but ran past the regrouping guards, up the stairs of the east tower.

She bursts through the nursery door, which goes from swinging on the bottom hinge to snapping off to land with a thud.

Elsa immediately spots Ingegred—alive!—kneeling behind a curved wall of ice.

"Mommy!" Ingered shouts, getting to her feet.

Elsa runs over, falling to her knees and wrapping her arms around her daughter. She glances at the room, but doesn't see any threat. Doesn't see anyone else. A ragged curtain blows softly in the hole where a window used to be. The room is wrecked.

"Are you hurt?" Elsa shifts Ingegrid to arms-length away and looks her over quickly, and then more carefully from head to toe. She seems alright.

"Inge, does anything hurt?" Elsa sweeps a lock of hair back, then runs her hands down her frame checking for any broken bones or sore spots.

"I'm okay, mommy, he won't let anything hurt me. He promised." Ingegred replied with wide eyes, glancing over at the charred right wall, then back.

Who? Elsa looked around the room again, but saw nobody.

"Mommy, it was loud!" Inge said with a sniff, tears starting to well up.

"Oh, love" Elsa clutched her daughter up to her chest, "It's all okay now. I'm here now. Nothing can get you while I'm here. I've got you… It's all okay now…" Inge shifted to curl up in her mom's lap; the two of them rocking softly back and forth. A pile of debris in the corner shifted sending down a small of cascade of dust and small stones tumbling to the floor.

Two guards came up to the door where relief flooded their faces, "Your Majesty, your Highness! You're alright!"

"Yes. Thank you, Wilhem," Elsa addressed the one who spoke. "If you could set up guards on the that window… gap… and the entrance of this room. We'll move to another room shortly. Are my chambers secure and intact."

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied, "though we'll set up extra patrols. It seems like this was the focus of the attack."

Elsa felt a shiver run down her spine and nodded her thanks at the guard. Turning down to look at her daughter she asked "Inge, what happened here?"

"A bad man came" Ingegred scrunched up her face into a scowl that mostly hid her fear. "He came in through the window on a bad horse with red eyes," she added. The window was not the way that most things came. "But then Jack came and fought off the bad man," she added with a touch of pride, glancing down to the wall with a small smile.

"Jack?" Elsa asked in confusion. She didn't know any guards or soldiers with that name.

"Yes!" Ingegred pipped back, "My Jack—remember I told you about him?"

'Ingegred's Jack?' Elsa though in bafflement, "the imaginary friend?"

"The snowman?" Elsa asked.

"Yes!" Ingegred gave a wiggle of excitement that her mom had remembered, "He fought the bad man 'cause he has powers like yours even though the bad man was scary and had dark things and fire but he said it would be okay and to stay behind the ice shield and it was noisy but the bad man went poof and went away."

My daughter's imaginary friend came and saved her? It seemed unlikely. She gathered Inge into her arms and stood to survey the room. If the attacker had come in through the window… there were a number of charred spots around the room. The ice shield that her daughter had been hiding behind was more to the center of the room.

'…he has powers like yours', Ingered had said. The ice that lingered in spots here and there and most noticeably in the shield must be from our ally. The charred areas—and I'd bet most of the damage; that bed set was mahogany—must then have been done by the 'bad man'.

Elsa stepped back. She knew ice well enough to see that the shield had been cast from the side… There was a trail of frost on the ground that suddenly expanded into a thick curved plate of ice, cupped back to guard from side attacks. It's surface had been melted and refrozen and… attacked by dark matter that was now metallically fused in the middle of some of the ice. The reinforcing layers had come from multiple directions: from in front… twice? From roughly a meter to the right, from the front left two meters…

Looking back behind those spots, given a starting trajectory close to the window (our 'snowman' mostly kept him from advancing farther into the room…), Elsa could see some corresponding damage to the wall (twice he must have just dodged)… Ah—and here the blast was deflected up to the ceiling. And to the right, judging from the scattered chips of ice, he blocked the attacks directly with his own powers.

But the shield had definitely first been cast from the right. Elsa followed the trail with her eyes to a spot a few feet from the wall… the wall which was dented in. Elsa shifted Inge to her hip and reached out her hand to trace where the plaster had cracked and buckled. This guy had thrown his ice between the enemy and her daughter and had likely taken an unprotected attack—one hard enough to nearly bust through a wall. Looking carefully, she could see the singed outline of a man—not very stocky; vague, but definitely not in the shape of a snowman.

Where had the fight been when it ended? What happened to the bodies? There were no puddles. There was no blood.

"Ingegred? Where did the good man go? Jack?" Elsa asked.

Ingegred pointed to a spot at the base of the right wall of the room. "I think he's asleep now"

The floor was empty. Elsa pursed her lips. Now was not the time to get into imaginary friends. Ingegred was safe. Ingegred was well and probably completely overwhelmed by everything. Elsa hugged her tighter.

For now, there was probably a man out there who was injured. She could offer free medical care for any injured persons around the capital for the next two days; he wouldn't have to worry about not having money for the physician and there were probably more than one bystander that got injured in this attack. She'd issue the proclamation tonight. One of her councillors—Cnut perhaps—could go send messengers to the physicians to let them know.

Why did the man run? Was he afraid of getting punished because of his abilities? But he lived in a land where the queen was accepted despite her gifts… Then again, anyone who'd witness a mob might be more than a little hesitant to placed their 'cursed' fate into their hands. She'd have to figure out a way to let him know it was safe to reveal himself. He had saved the crown princess. Nobody would lay a finger on him.

And for now, there was nothing left to do here. Repairs could start in the morning and until then, Elsa would be more than happy to have her daughter sleep in the same room as her. It was getting far past Inge's bedtime.

"Let's get you ready for bed. With your father traveling, there's plenty of spare space in my bed." Elsa told her daughter.

But Inge gave her an aghast look, "We can't just leave him there!"

"Who?" Elsa asked.

"Jack! We should wake him up and tuck him into bed, too!" Ingegred squirmed around to get down.

"Inge! Ingegerd!" Elsa held onto her wiggling three-year old, "there's no one there!"

"Yes there is!" Inge replied, hotly, "You just can't see him 'cause you're so old!"

"Ingegerd! That's no way to—"

"Bunny!" Inge interrupted, staring now into the middle of the empty room.

"Ingegerd! Do not interrupt your elders when they are talking! And it's very rude to call someone old! Are you even listening to me?"

She didn't look like she was. Her eyes tracked from this new imaginary person to the spot she pointed at near the wall.

"Yes I'm fine!" Ingegerd pipped out "There was a bad man but Jack made him go away!"

'The crown princess. Talking to thin air. This day cannot end fast enough,' thought Elsa.

"Yup! And then he said he was tired and went to bed! Right there on the _floor_!" Ingegerd giggled, "Why is he always so silly?!"

'My daughter supplied her funny imaginary friend in place of the fighter? Maybe as a way to offset from being so frightened? I should never have left her.' Elsa mourned.

"Okay! Tuck him in tight and give him a goodnight kiss for me!"

Elsa pursed her lips and squinted to look really carefully where her daughter was looking. She blew a quick probing breeze through that area of the room. Nothing.

Ingegerd burst into giggles again, told the air "Okay!" and turned to her mother, "we should go to bed now."

"We don't need to put your snowman to bed?" Elsa replied in a wry voice, then mentally kicked herself for bringing it back up.

"No. Bunny said he'd take him home to a his burrow. He has people-beds there, too."

"Ah," Elsa replied, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Maybe Anna knows how to deal with imaginary friends.

She turned to leave and caught sight a flower—a tulip?—springing out of the floor where Inge had been staring. It hadn't _been there_ a second ago. And tulips don't grow out of floors. Was it a form of attack?

But the flower and it's leaves just waved gently in the evening breeze.

'Nope!', thought Elsa, 'enough for today. We're going to bed. I'll deal with attack flowers tomorrow.' … 'I better post a guard.'

She set Inge up with one of her husband's large cotton shirts and sent for Cnut, Harold and Margarat to meet her in her outer rooms while she tucked in Ingegerd.

Elsa kissed Inge on the head and quietly said, "I'm going to be just outside this room while I talk to Cnut and then I'll be right back. I'll even leave the door cracked. Then you and I both will be catching up on some sleep!"

Ingegerd yarned, and murmured "alright mommy".

"Oh, and if you see the soldier again—the one that helped you today—could you tell me? Could you tell him that I wish to know how I can repay him?"

Ingegerd nodded with another yawn.

"Goodnight, my brave little one" Elsa whispered and tucked her in tight.

On the other side of a different world, Tooth and North looked down upon their fellow guardian, still out cold.

"He'll be fine once he sleeps it off," declared North.

Tooth tucked the blankets up a little higher, "Though he might be a little sore. I wish we had had more warning."

"I don't you worry, Tooth. All tucked in snug. The kiss he'll have to get from the princess. Yeuck! He'll be up and causing chaos before you're even halfway ready for the mischief to begin again. And if he plays the layabout too long, I'll just get my eggs to paint him. It'll make up for all the leaves. Now don't you both have better things to do?" Bunny said, shoo-ing them away. And if he spent the rest of the next day with one eye on the room, nobody was about to mention it.


End file.
